Mistress at Midnight

by Sophia James

  ‘Thank you.’

  She smiled then, a full honest humour across her eyes, and allowed him to hold her fingers as they made their way through the front door to hail a hansom cab. After seeing her into it, he stepped back, his figure receding as she was driven the road.

  She was home again in her room, the clock only just striking six and not a movement in the house.

  Nothing had changed and yet everything had. She was a scarlet woman, a fallen woman, a woman who had seen a chance that she wanted to take and had taken it, in the bed of a lord who had transported her to heaven and back.

  Between her thighs was the wetness of their coupling and her lips were swollen. Crossing to her mirror, Aurelia saw how his loving had marked her, branded her, making real that which she might have otherwise thought she imagined.

  The scarlet silk highlighted everything. Her hair. Her pouting mouth. The swell of her bosom where his hands had lingered.

  What next? What would happen when she saw Hawk again in the light of day at some soirée with all the manners and expectations of the ton swirling about her? What if she saw him in Leonora’s presence or in Cassandra’s? Would he say something? Would he hold her hand and expect…recognition? Would those about them perceive what she was certain would be in her eyes and on her face, her cursed blushes more prominent now than had been noticeable as a maiden?

  She had unstoppered a genie that was both magical and terrible. Lust burnt in her eyes, the glitter of memory having an effect on her stomach and on the places between her legs where he had touched. Throbbing. Craving.

  Outside, the first dawn calls of the birds surfaced and the sky was lightening. A new day and a new life. Closing her eyes, she smiled.

  Chapter Twelve

  Leonora pressed into her side as Rodney Northrup went to find them each a drink.

  It had been two days and nights since her…folly? She could conjure up no other way to put it and she had not heard a word from Stephen Hawkhurst since.

  ‘I love these large affairs,’ her sister was saying. ‘I love the lights and the dresses and the dancing, but most of all I love Rodney.’

  Aurelia had to nod in agreement. Cassandra’s brother was gracious, charming and attentive. He had called in at Braeburn House almost every morning since Hawkhurst’s ball and his composure and temperament had never faltered. ‘You are most fortunate to have caught Northrup’s eye, Leonora, though I am certain he would say the same about you.’

  ‘You truly like him, Aurelia? I can’t tell you just how much that means to me, for I think if he asks me to be his bride I shall say yes.’

  Her voice wavered as she looked across the room. ‘Is that not Mr James Beauchamp, Lia? I had asked Rodney to point him out to me once and I am certain that is the man speaking with Lord Hawkhurst.’

  A tightening in her throat had more to do with the name of Hawkhurst than the mention of a man who would be her father’s successor and she felt her fingers grip her reticule with a sudden strength.

  ‘You look pale, Aurelia, but do not worry. All your efforts with Papa have paid off and I have never heard even the slightest of whispers…’ She stopped as the two men looked to be coming their way. Three, now, for Nathaniel Lindsay was also at their side.

  ‘Mrs St Harlow, Miss Beauchamp.’ Hawkhurst spoke first, the polite smile on his face alluding to none of the secret hours that they had shared in the moonlight. Allowing a good space between them, he introduced James Beauchamp, the mask of cordial social discourse firmly in place.

  Her father’s heir was nothing like Aurelia had expected. He looked younger, for a start, and was more convivial. Taking her hand warmly, he bowed in respect.

  ‘I had hoped to be introduced to you since my return from the Americas a good three months ago, Mrs St Harlow.’

  ‘Indeed.’ She did not look over at Hawkhurst at all. What was he playing at? She had warned him not to interfere and yet here he was and in a venue where she couldn’t refuse to at least offer politeness.

  Leonora had taken her once-removed cousin’s presence much to heart, however, and was impressing upon him the importance of meeting with Harriet and Prudence. Nathaniel Lindsay watched the proceedings with interest.

  ‘We did not see you last evening at the Coopers’, Mrs St Harlow. There was a musical interlude and I thought you might have been interested.’

  ‘I had a quiet evening, Lord Lindsay.’

  ‘The influenza is still troubling your father, then?’

  Forced into another lie she nodded, catching the hint of humour in Hawkhurst’s face. Cassandra had come amongst the group and as a waltz began she ordered Hawkhurst to ask Aurelia to dance before leading her husband on to the floor, James Beauchamp and Leonora following.

  When Hawkhurst’s arms came about her all she could remember was the wonder of their night together, though she tried her hardest to appear as nonchalant as he was.

  ‘Your nemesis is not a bad chap and as he was pestering Nat for an introduction I thought to do the honours myself. His own abode is supposedly bigger and more prepossessing than Braeburn House.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘He is rich, Aurelia, and congenial. In the scheme of things an introduction to one of your sisters might not be too bad a thing—easier than stalking another aristocrat, at least.’

  When she did not answer he continued. ‘The world is not always crouching to strike, my love.’ The unexpected endearment had her looking up. ‘Perhaps if you gave it a chance you might end up surprised.’

  Of a sudden Aurelia had no real grasp of which issue he spoke on.

  ‘I missed you last night.’ He whispered this so that there was no possibility of being overheard.

  To one side of the room she noticed Elizabeth Berkeley and her group of friends again dressed mainly in the colour yellow watching them. Danger lurked everywhere here. In Nathaniel Lindsay’s humour-filled eyes and in his wife’s insistence on Hawk asking her to dance. Even Leonora was taking her place in the unravelling of protections by inviting James Beauchamp home to Braeburn House.

  The pursuit of her own needs was causing everything else to fall out of place, invitations, introductions and endearments.

  Yet Stephen Hawkhurst had remained honourable in his promise of privacy. Not in a public word or gesture did he appear as a man who had taken all she would offer and wanted to again.

  ‘Are you free tonight?’

  She should shake her head and say no. She should smile politely and deem all that had been between them a mistake. She should ask him to release her from any promises and vows whispered in the heat of passion and walk away. Unhurt.

  But she couldn’t. Instead she waited.

  ‘I will be in the carriage on the corner that turns into Upper Brooke Street at twelve tonight.’

  When her heartbeat speeded up she knew that he could feel it. ‘Then I shall be there.’

  As the music finished Hawkhurst led her back to her sister and Rodney and Cassandra and Nathaniel joined them. As she stood opposite Hawkhurst, making polite conversation, every part of her longed to be closer, knowing him, feeling him.

  ‘You look a little tired, Aurelia.’ Cassandra laid a hand on her arm, shaking her back to the present. ‘Are you sleeping well of late? I think it must be catching, for Hawk has been exhausted, as well. Yesterday Nathaniel found him asleep after the noon hour when he went to call.’ Aurelia did not dare to look over at Stephen Hawkhurst to see his reaction to such a statement, but the web of their lies began to tangle. She knew she would need to be careful and yet she only wished it was already midnight.

  His chamber was festooned with candles and freshly cut roses when he led her into it three hours later. A well-thought-out tryst: two glasses and a bottle of wine sat on the table before the sofa. Rhenish, she noticed, and expensive. Her father had once enjoyed it.

  ‘You look beautiful tonight, Aurelia.’

  ‘So do you.’

  At that he smiled and, pouring them each a glass, r
aised his own. ‘To us, then. To this. To wherever it takes us.’

  His eyes showed a clear-cut want. Not knowing quite know how to reply, she stayed silent.

  ‘Cassandra suspects we are sleeping together.’

  ‘She told you of this.’ Her horror vied with sheer embarrassment and that chased on the heels of a worry about Leonora. ‘She will never allow Rodney to marry my sister now. I have ruined her chances.’

  He laughed at that, then swallowed what was left in his glass. ‘I think Cassie’s world view may be more expansive than you give her credit for. And she is not a gossipmonger.’

  ‘But someone else will be. One day.’

  His hand took hers, all humour gone. ‘If that happens, I will protect you.’

  But not love you? She almost said it, almost blurted it out, this want for more, because she knew in that one particular moment with the smell of candle wax and petals strangely mixed that she loved Stephen Hawkhurst more than life itself. She would risk her family and the reputation of her sisters for him, throwing all caution to the wind and taking what her body craved.

  With trepidation Aurelia walked to the window. she knew Hawkhurst made her foolish and imprudent, but when he moved up behind her she simply turned into his arms and accepted warm lips that came down across her own.

  The world reformed into only feeling, his hand across her skirts pulling them up, skin touching skin, his thick maleness scalding her soft flesh, asking for entrance.

  ‘I want you.’

  Her voice commanding exactly that which her head had tried to refuse, but the urge was too strong and she gave in to reason as he pushed within her, her nails running down his back in runnels of both shame and passion. But elation had begun to play its high notes deep within, too, the answering need, the thin clenching knowledge that made her back arch as he rode her against the wall in the light of the candles and the moon and the silence.

  Afterwards her head dropped on to his shoulders, both their heartbeats racing in unison. And then she began to cry, because she knew she could do nothing to stop this enchantment between them and that it could only end in the ruining of her family.

  He felt Aurelia’s tears soaking into the fabric of his shirt and listened to the racking sobs.

  He had not hurt her physically, he knew that, her body wet and ready for acceptance, her hands and teeth keeping him to his task of loving, and the waves of climax flowing strong between them. When he pulled back he even felt resistance as she tried to halt the uncoupling.

  Nothing made sense any more and he struggled for equilibrium.

  Aurelia knocked him sideways, that was the trouble. She made him question all that he had believed in and understood to be true.

  Every single person he had ever loved had been lost, save for Alfred, and the truth had scalded him with grief. He remembered the master at school giving him the news of his parents’ death, unfeelingly, as though death was only a small blink in the day-to-day running of a busy schedule. He remembered his brother, too, gone as he had tried to drag him away from the mad Frenchman on the hills above Lyon.

  If you do not love, you can never be hurt.

  It had been a motto that he recited every time he left another woman and he had not allowed himself the chance to get close.

  Until Aurelia had breached the wall, tearing down his isolation like a wave against a sandcastle, and so easily that any opportunity to regroup was gone.

  ‘I do not want this…this…but I cannot stop it.’ Her hands gestured to her body, shaking with the angst of all she relayed to him. Like him, caught in a maelstrom.

  ‘Ahh, sweetheart,’ he replied, the endearment coming without notice. ‘Believe me when I say this is a gift seldom enjoyed by others.’

  ‘You have felt it before?’

  ‘Never.’

  Her answering smile was beautiful. ‘I think I should go home now. Papa wakes early sometimes.’

  ‘I will take you.’

  Leonora was waiting in her room as she carefully opened the door and let herself in.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Aurelia knew the moment her sister realised she had been crying. ‘What has happened, Lia? Has Hawkhurst hurt you?’

  ‘You saw the carriage?’

  ‘From The window. He is dangerous, Lia. Dangerous and distant and reckless. Rodney says he is a spy.’ The look in her sister’s eyes nearly broke her heart. ‘You cannot do this. You must not. After Charles…’

  ‘He is nothing like his cousin.’

  ‘Hawkhurst has killed people. Lots of them. It is why he carries that darkness within. Oh, my God. You will be ruined again and this time by a master.’

  Leonora’s glance took in her tousled hair and the creases in the gown.

  ‘You have slept with him?’

  Her sister’s chest rose in consternation, her mouth falling wide with the shock of it all, but Aurelia found she could not lie.

  ‘More than once.’

  ‘And you will do so again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  At the bareness of her reply Leonora sat down. ‘Tell me why?’

  A different tack and unexpected. No longer a child, but a young woman who needed a reason. ‘For years I have been a ruined widow, isolated and alone.’ She held up her hand as her sister began to speak. ‘Alone in the worrying about our family, trying to piece it together, trying to make it survive and I have never allowed myself to think of anything other than that. Until now.’

  ‘Until Stephen Hawkhurst?’

  As she nodded, the next query came. ‘Does he love you?’

  ‘It is not love we have spoken of, Leonora, but need. He is thirty-one and I am twenty-six. We are not in the first flush of youth and neither of us is unrealistic.’

  ‘Love is not so proscribed, Lia. I know this now. If he will not make a commitment after all that is between you—’

  Aurelia stopped her. ‘Then I still would have known how it can be between a man and a woman. When I am old I will have that magic inside.’

  ‘And if there is a child?’

  ‘There will not be.’

  ‘My God, Lia, I have always believed that you are the strongest woman in the world and now I know it. But even you could be wrong. Please, please be careful.’

  When she nodded Leonora hugged her and left, the lamp by her bed flickering in the draught of the door as it closed.

  Hawkhurst frightened people. At first he had frightened her, but she had seen beneath the mask he donned in public. A man who thought of flowers and candles to woo her was not as distant as he might profess and the endearments he had whispered as he held her sobbing in the dark after making love were not the actions of an unfeeling and uncaring man.

  Neither was the way he worshipped her body.

  And if there is a child? Leonora’s words came back.

  If there was a child she should love it in the same way she loved its father. With all of her body and with all of her heart.

  A new beginning.

  One hand fell to her stomach, cupping the hope.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Aurelia took inordinate care with the long lists of numbers before her, balancing this column against that one and rechecking across the rows several times before placing her pen down.

  Her bottom lines were being realised, the risks she had taken with fabric lengths and designs, weaves and wefts and colour finally paying off. She could barely believe the profit the company would garner in the next weeks, substantial and open-ended sums of money right down to Christmas. With a flourish she underlined her projected earnings and leaned back.

  All the years of work had been worth it. All the doubts and uncertainties and constant gnawing worries had come down to a business that was prosperous and well managed. She allowed herself a quiet glow of pride before laying her pen on the paper and looking out of the window.

  The river’s presence had encroached on all the buildings around Park Street. Shipbuilders, barge-builders, sailm
akers, mast-makers and rope-makers as well as sundry other general shipping-related enterprises had made this area their home.

  Sometimes if the wind was right she could smell the Thames, but nearly always she could hear the sounds of it: the horns of passing traders, the shouts of the sailors calling, the flap of canvas and the creak of rope. Her world now, comfortable, known and in its own way exhilarating.

  Henry Kerslake returned an hour later and he looked preoccupied and flustered, but the most surprising thing of all was that Frederick Delsarte came in after him.

  ‘You are not welcome here.’ She was surprised her voice was so strong.

  ‘As I am your business partner, in the very loose sense of the word, I thought you might be more welcoming.’

  When she did not reply he laughed. ‘Always the lady. Always the wise voice of reason that Charles was so sick of by the end. Princess Aurelia, with your high-born morals and constant disdain.’

  Moving forwards he slapped her, full across the cheek. The force of it made her head snap backwards, her hair falling to her waist in a slow dance of red. Henry Kerslake had gone to stand by the window, looking out. No possible help there. Delsarte’s right hand curled into her bosom, outlining the bounty, squeezing hard. ‘Stay away from trouble. Stay away from society. But most of all stay away from Lord Stephen Hawkhurst. Do you understand? It may also be prudent for you to think of a reasonable price for the sale of your business.’

  Fear made her stiffen. ‘It will never be on the market, sir, not to you or any other that might covet it.’

  Delsarte kept speaking as though she had said nothing. ‘A reasonable sum should see it in my hands, madam. A fair price given the history between us and your straitened circumstances. Kerslake here has a good idea as to how much it is worth and has allowed me to name a starting point.’

  Aurelia glanced at Henry, but he did not meet her stare. Rather he looked away as though he wanted no part of this conversation.

  ‘The business is solely in my name, sir. Kerslake has no mandate over any selling price.’

  ‘Take care, then, Mrs St Harlow. Intransigence may only lead to difficulties and with three sisters all needing husbands…’ He did not finish.